Ninth Circuit Upholds San Francisco Gun Storage Law

You’ve heard it before, probably here — the only place a gun belongs is on your hip or locked in a safe. Good advice, that. But the city of San Francisco has elevated a good practice into a law and now, in their ruling in Jackson v. The City of San Francisco, the Ninth Circuit court of appeals has upheld its constitutionality. As the court acknowledged, “This indirectly burdens the ability to use a handgun, because it requires retrieving a weapon from a locked safe or removing a trigger lock.” . . .

But because it burdens only the “manner in which persons may exercise their Second Amendment rights,” the regulation more closely resembles a content-neutral speech restriction that regulates only the time, place, or manner of speech. The record indicates that a modern gun safe may be opened quickly.

So yes, the law limits citizens’ Second Amendment freedoms, but it’s OK since modern gun safes can be opened relatively quickly. As the court sees it, that’s a small burden given the city’s interest in preventing potentially bad outcomes:

Jackson contends that section 4512 is over-inclusive because it applies even when the risk of unauthorized access by children or others is low, such as when a handgun owner lives alone. We reject this argument, because San Francisco has asserted important interests that are broader than preventing children or unauthorized users from using the firearms, including an interest in preventing firearms from being stolen and in reducing the number of handgun-related suicides and deadly domestic violence incidents.

They also upheld the ban on the sale of hollow points within city limits, although San Franciscans are free to own them and use them as long as they come by them elsewhere. So the Ninth Circus giveth and they taketh away. They’ve advanced the cause of concealed carry with their Peruta decision, but are fine with criminalizing those who keep a pistol on their nightstand while they snooze. Such is life in the 2A-challenged utopia of California.

I assume this gives SFPD the right to inspect gun owner’s storage, since thats the only way to enforce it. That California long gun and pistol registry also gives them a nice map of all the houses they need to visit as well. But no one is coming to take your guns. *adjusts tin foil fedora*

I don’t think they really intend to enforce it. This is one of those “Extra Hook” laws.

It’s become so difficult to secure convictions for “real crimes” that laws like this are passed. Let’s say someone does something “wrong” with a gun, but that “crime” is hard to prove or gets tossed on a technicality.

If you have enough Paper Crimes like this one in place, you still secure a conviction, in this case for “improper storage” rather than the actual real crime (which was harder to prove, or some such).

This is similar to the situation a few years back when some State(s) tried to pass laws requiring drug dealers to have a license. The whole purpose of that attempt was to still have a “hook” to convict. Even if they could not meet the standards for “dealer” or whatever reason, they still had “But you did not have a license.” (As I recall, these were either struck down or never passed in the first place).

It was stupid; and this is stupid. There are many, many examples of this same stupidity. Ask yourself, for example, why we need in excess of 70 some (probably more now) laws pertaining to drunk driving.

There are 50 states; 50 copies of “it’s illegal to drive while intoxicated” should do it, no? But why the excess?

Because the States have a hard time convicting the REAL crime, so other “hook” ones are added. In a nutshell, I think that’s what is going on here.

Unfortunately it also provides the DA an angle to persecute home defenders by asserting that the owner accessed their weapon too quickly, therefore implying that the weapon could not have been secured according to statute. Now what kind of jury will decide that in San Francisco? I hope I’m wrong about this.

Exactly, It’s about the idea. It’s not about saying “Oh this will only slightly inconvenience you.”, because “slightly inconvenienced” is in the eye of the beholder. I’m sure non-Jewish people during the Holocaust were only “slightly inconvenienced”.

And the SFPD’s budget is determined by the city council. So, the Police Chief has two options- go along with supporting what the council thinks is a good idea; or tell them they’re idiots and risk them taking it out on his budget– i.e. his ability to do his job training, equipping and utilizing his officers.

The Police chief, reported on in this blog some time ago, thinks that the issuance of CCWs should be based on objective criteria evaluated subjectively. No one really knows what that means. Oh wait, yes we do. He has issued TWO CCWs, one to an officer who lives out of town, and one to a civilian employee of the SFSO. (And the Sheriff has done the same, issuing one for a reserve officer and one for a civilian employee of the SFPD.)

Double plus good!!! Let the clowns on the council take away the cops budget, less to worry about then. Cut by at least one half, that should be a good place to start. Then permanently lay off 3/4 of the officers.

Aren’t those the bullets that implode? And the only way to stop them is to poke your fingers into the wounds and then cover yourself in the blood of your former political enemy, now conveniently murdered leading to your rise to power?

The issue with hollow points, according to the City (and an argument that the Court accepted) is that hollow points have “increased lethality”, and the City has a “compelling governmental interest” in reducing the lethality of bullets.
Huh? Isn’t that like saying the city should be able to ban bullets entirely, because after all, a gun without bullets has less lethality than one that is loaded. On the other hand, there is only one gun store in the city, and it hardly has any ammo anyway, because the city, by ordinance, limits the quantity it can have on hand. (The City would like to get rid of the store, but its efforts failed, so now they have regulated it to the point that it is probably very difficult for that business to make money.)

This is what happens when you don’t get strict scrutiny. “The government has a strong public safety interest in vetting and approving who owns and carries guns.” Which of course has been shut down as far as the 9th goes, hopefully the East coast follows once it hits the Supremes. Now we are going to be fighting serialized 15 pound triggers, mandatory $10 a round safety bullets, and other “safety” value added propositions to try to curtail the right to carry.

Just another unenforcible law. The police can not break down the door on suspicion that you have a loaded firearm that’s not locked up per regulation. Pass all of those laws you want, I’ll keep ignoring them.

Yes, although if the victim manages to keep his nerve after the experience of shooting someone in self-defense, he will remember not to respond to such a question. If he has to say anything, he could say that he doesn’t feel good and would like to see a doctor, or anything else for that matter that does not involve answering the question.

Good advice to STFU, but nothing will keep the cop from arresting someone in this scenario short of an open safe or lockbox or trigger lock. So keep an unlocked trigger lock next to your gun at all times and you’ll be ok in this scenario.

But not in the scenario where a roommate foolishly lets a cop in the house and the cop discovers an unlocked gun in your room while you were out going to a gun free zone.

Maybe buy a trigger lock, undo it, and keep it next to your nightstand gun? ” Yes, Officer, here is my gun lock. And you and the mayor and the 9th Circuit were right, I was able to get it off and use my gun just like you said I would be able to.”

Doesn’t Cali have gun safe laws? Like it has to be certified to be up to Yee’s stringent standards? Dunno if just a trigger lock would meet this law. Its just insane, how many of these defensive gun uses have involved someone kicking in a door, and the occupant running to the bedroom to retrieve their gun by the bedside. How can it not be an infringement when all these people could be dead if this law were in place then?

You’ve nailed it, alpo. Only, perhaps not now but a few years from now it will be so. Also, the story is out and many are discussing her incident as a good shoot. Then, word of her being a criminal because of ‘safe storage’ law trickles out. The bandwagon rolls along of those chiding others for ‘not waiting for all of the facts’ and how this woman can’t be supported by the ’cause’ because she isn’t law abiding. The cries go out, “How, oh how can those we want to sway in the ‘middle’ perceive us if we support such a scofflaw!”

Well let the first person who gets shot from a home invasion sue the city, County and State for violating their rights and SCOTUS ruling that we are responsible for protecting ourselves. Makes sure to ask for BILLIONS with a B and stick it to them.

I sometimes nap while armed… I simply don’t bother to disarm. In the spring and summer months on the farm, I’m more likely than not to be armed if I take a nap because I can just go right back to working after awaking.

Yeah … Apart from the above, all the RVs moving at about 15 miles per hour in the curvey sections between Monterey and Cambria can make it a miserable experience for anyone who likes twisty roads and beautiful scenery. Can’t see around then, can’t pass most places.

There’s also not a lot of opportunity to cut inland for most of that stretch, either.

Sadly, I speak from experience here, albeit from a motorcycling perspective.

San Francisco, the city that enabled tens of thousands of men to effectively murder each other with AIDS. If only the city had passed an anti-same-sex-copulation law (a variation on a safe storage law), so many thousands of mothers and fathers would still have the comfort of their sons’ company.

Oh yes, I understand, if you’re libertarian, you don’t agree. Fine. The point is the hypocrisy of the Left. They are only too willing to put their Right to Screw ahead of the lives of thousands upon thousands, but they will take away everyone’s natural and constitutional right to self-defense “if it saves only one child’s life.”

(Especially because when SWAT teams shoot people acting in self-defense, the SWAT members feel really bad about it before going home to a hot shower and meal. We have to think about their feelings, too.)

San Francisco may get away with this because of the “allowance” for home carry. SCOTUS found the DC statute to be unconstitutional because it didn’t specifically allow an exception to the sotrage requirement for self-defense.

San Francisco does allow for that exception and hence might pass constitutional muster.

The Court in Heller addressed the trigger lock issue as follows (asterisks added for emphasis):

We must also address the District’s requirement (as applied to respondent’s handgun) that firearms in the home be ***rendered and kept inoperable at all times***. This makes it impossible for citizens to use them for the core lawful purpose of self-defense and is hence unconstitutional. The District argues that we should interpret this element of the statute to contain an exception for self-defense. See Brief for Petitioners 56–57. But we think that is precluded by the unequivocal text, and by the presence of certain other enumerated exceptions: “Except for law enforcement personnel . . . , each registrant shall keep any firearm in his possession unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger lock or similar device unless such firearm is kept at his place of business, or while being used for lawful recreational purposes within the District of Columbia.” D. C. Code §7–2507.02. The ***nonexistence of a self-defense exception*** is also suggested by the D. C. Court of Appeals’ statement that the statute forbids residents to use firearms to stop intruders, see McIntosh v. Washington, 395 A. 2d 744, 755–756 (1978)….

The Court of Appeals did not invalidate the licensing requirement, but held only that the District ***“may not prevent [a handgun] from being moved throughout one’s house.”*** 478 F. 3d, at 400…

In sum, we hold that the District’s ban on handgun possession in the home violates the Second Amendment, as does its prohibition against rendering any lawful firearm in the home operable for the purpose of immediate self-defense. Assuming that Heller is not disqualified from the exercise of Second Amendment rights, the District must permit him to register his handgun and must issue him a license to carry it in the home.

I remember in the oral arguments, Scalia mocking the DC attorney about “hearing a noise in the night, finding his glasses, getting the key to unlock the gun” (Not his precise words). The point was that the gun did not need to be on the person, but it did need to be at the ready. Here is one that I think aligns with the USSC Heller decision:

Distinguished–DC said you had to keep your gun locked up at home, period. Heller says that went too far. SF says you can carry your gun around at home. The possible issue I see–what defines “on your person”? Is “laid out on the table right next to my hand” the functional equivalent? It generally is for, say, drug possession charges… I’m still thinking get a cheap trigger lock. With their official propaganda–and indeed, the basis of this ruling–stating otherwise, the authorities are hardly in a position to say, “We know you couldn’t have undone that quickly enough to actually be able to use your gun.” And if they do (the leftist’s capacity for self-contradiction is legendary), they’ve just admitted that the law they are trying to convict you under is invalid under Heller.

The problem is not what the law is looking to accomplish (at least on its face).
Of course keeping firearms away from those who shouldn’t have them is laudable.

The problem is that laws like these only increase and multiply. Today it’s storage of firearms. Tomorrow it’s “lock up your car keys”, the next day “you have to have a child-proof lock on your refrigerator if you have beer in it.”

Eventually you’ll have the government telling you how much salt, trans-fat and sugar you’re allowed to consume (not an exageration, see NYC under Mayor Mike ‘I know best’ Bloomberg).

After that, it’s getting your fingerprints scanned anytime when you’re on gov’t property. (one of Mayor Mike’s proposals that never took off).

The slippery slope on this is not tinfoil hat territory. It’s 100% real, has happened in other cities and will continue to happen, always in the guise of “it’s for your own good” and “think of the children!”.

It’s a law regulating the keeping and bearing of arms by the people so it’s an infringement regardless of content. They could conceivably pass a law about discharge of a firearm but not the keeping and bearing and be constitutional, IMHO.

Being a normal civillian there are so many times or places I can’t legally carry, a gun can not always be on my hip. Having it n my safe puts my firearms on a different floor than my bedroom. This means I keep loaded firearms in every room of my house. If I come home to an intruder, I can be armed only a few steps in the door. The weapons being in my safe, and in one location, provides a weakness. I was raised in a house with unlocked firearms and never was there an issue in my home. I definitely think if you have kids, you need to keep their grubby fingers off of the guns until they are a certain maturity but in my house growing up it was called good parenting and discipline. Same thing in my house today.

Speaking of San Francisco and their corrupt laws, it looks like their poster boy Senator Leland Yee got caught for public corruption. Making him the third democratic senator here in CA for that to happen too.

I fail to see safe storage laws as a 2nd Amendment violation. It isn’t preventing me from keeping or bearing.

That said, it is extremely shortsighted and pointless as legislation, not to mention unenforceable as a safety measure unless some other form of legislation is enacted that IS unconstitutional, whether by a different violation of the 2nd amendment or a violation of the 4th amendment.

If someone has broken into my home, they’ve already defeated at least one layer of security. I’d say a locked door and security system qualifies as “safely stored” from a legal perspective. The perp has to violate multiple laws and destroy/disable one or more devices designed to protect my property in order to gain access to said property. So they’re already in deep doo-doo legally. And since the court specifically said that the compelling gov’t interest was not necessarily related to child safety, I throw any storage law that applies when I’m home and responsible for my property as moot.

Throw in the very fact that the penalty (criminal negligence, involuntary manslaughter) for letting a child access a weapon and injure/kill themselves or another person is probably higher than the penalty for failing to safely secure a weapon, and should serve as a much more effective deterrent. Not to mention that the criminal penalties are last in my mind when it comes to making sure my kids don’t off themselves or their mother. At the forefront of my mind in that case is, well, the fact that I love my family and don’t want any of them to die.

A safe storage law directly prevents you from bearing. If you have to wait 5-10 seconds to bear arms during an emergency, when you might not have 5-10 seconds to spare, then you are being kept from bearing arms.

As far as I’m concerned, it’s also a violation of the 4th amendment and of the general privileges of the home under several hundred years of common law.

Hey, it’s OK – none of the Frisco libs own guns,other than the politicians like Feinstein and Pelosi, and they get to ignore any inconvenient laws. 99% of all the other gun owners in Frisco are the criminals, and they get to ignore laws because the Frisco cops leave them alone – don’t want to be accused of insensitivity to the plight of the underprivileged.

The remaining 1% conservative, honest gun owners in Frisco are “Enemies of the People”, and had better find a way to leave before they are “killed while resisting a lawful search.”

Frisco is in Texas (where I lived until just recently) just outside of Dallas. San Francisco, or SF for short, is the city in which I now reside. I am as liberal, informed, and progressive, as you are the opposite of those things. And I own guns. Two, in fact. Your assertion is invalid.

Just another absurd law that criminals don’t even know or care about that criminalizes common sense behavior and actions by lawful citizens. Anarchy ensues when a nation passes so many nonsensical, complicated, and impossible to enforce laws. People will eventually ignore the law – all laws in general. Whereby everyone becomes a criminal.

I predict that this nation will split similarly to how the Roman Empire split into an East and West empires. There is no way our Constitutional Republic as one nation can continue on our current course of Federal government expansion and the further erosion of personal liberties and freedoms. Something is going to give in the future. Who knows when?

ya Allah that make sense. Sandy Hook would not have happened if the guns were in the safe in the mother only knew the code. Oregon mall shooting again gun stolen from a family member acquaintance wouldn’t have happened if it was locked up. if you’re careless and allowing unauthorized illegal use of your weapon, you should be put in jail for whatever crime including murder was committed with that a weapon, and this is not a second Amendment right you don’t have a right to be an idiot with a gun. I have a gun on my hip as I text from my smartphone and my other weapons are in a safe and my ammo and reloading supplies are in another safe.

Nor do you have an obligation to stop a criminal from committing criminal acts with the goods he has stolen from you.

So when a thug steals your car, which you accidentally left unlocked, you should go to jail for the two pedestrians he runs over?

And when a thug steals your power tools, which you very carelessly kept in your garage instead of in a giant safe bolted to your floor, and uses them to break into others’ homes, you should go to jail?

Government has enough usurped power. Let’s leave them to work on taking care of the actual crime, of which there’s apparently more than they can handle, instead of giving them license to make more paper criminals.

That make sense. Sandy Hook would not have happened if the guns were in the safe and mother only knew the code. Oregon mall shooting again gun stolen from a family member acquaintance wouldn’t have happened if it was locked up. If you’re careless and allowing unauthorized illegal use of your weapon, you should be put in jail for whatever crime including murder was committed with that a weapon, and this is not a second Amendment right you don’t have a right to be an idiot with a gun. I have a gun on my hip as I text from my smartphone, and my other weapons are in a safe and my ammo and reloading supplies are in another safe.

I have a biometric safe in my night stand. Its just to keep sticky 3 year old fingers out. I had another safe with a combo I kept in the stand and although it isn’t state law ,AR, it was junk. I just sat the gun on top of it. I would do the same in Cali, add the trigger safety and the cable LAYING beside it. Hell, even the ammo box, fmj of course.

Remember arguments you’d have on the playground in 1st, 2nd grade? You’d say X and the other guy would say Y and you’d go back and forth as to who’s correct. Then the other guy would ask a third guy and he’d agree that it’s Y. “See? It’s Y, just like I said!”, the other guy would triumphantly declare. Well.

Who the F is this third kid and what the hell does he know? Nothing. He’s just there. Just another runny nose rugrat like the rest of us. Well, that’s what this ruling is. This snot nosed court is just another group of nobodies just spouting off. Yes, they have the legal authority, I get it, but the robes don’t make them right.

The 2A reads keep and BEAR. This ruling is flat out unconstitutional on its face for denying the right to bear arms. Really, regulating the “manner” in which a right may be exercised is more than sufficient to throttle its exercise altogether without even touching upon its so-called content.

Would this same court uphold a ban on abortions within the city limits? Would it uphold an ordinance mandating that all cleaning supplies and other potential poisons be locked up, for children’s safety? What about medications? Must you have a specialized dedicated refrigerated safe for your heart medicine? When the big one strikes, I sure hope you remember the combo, can find the key, or that the print reader doesn’t malfunction. What if you can’t/don’t have, want, or even know anyone with kids? Why must you be burdened with such a law? Must everyone now buy child car seats today because they theoretically might transport a child in the future?

Would this same court allow restrictions on free speech in one’s own home, based only on time, manner and place, not content? You’re free to criticize the government, but only in a hushed whisper, in a closet, between the hours of 3:30 and 3:31 a.m.? And even then, only after first typing your comments into Word and reviewing them for spelling, grammar, and Flesch-Kinkaid readabilty? After all, modern word processing software can proof documents easily.

This ruling isn’t legal or even political. It’s personal. It’s these noodle spined justices getting hammered by their ultra liberal friends at cocktail parties over their Peruta decision. So now they needed something to show they’re still the same old freedom infringing liberals their family and friends know and love.

Really, regulating the “manner” in which a right may be exercised is more than sufficient to throttle its exercise altogether without even touching upon its so-called content.

Precisely! Shall not be infringed was so useful in its simplicity. The People cannot continue to allow government to twist, and in some cases completely disregard, the terms under which the People agreed to be governed.

If someone’s breaking into that, what difference is a padlock on a gun cabinet, trigger lock or small, lightweight biometric safe going to make. None.
Hell, if someone has their gun(s) stolen, by the time they’re recovred, who’s going to say that the locking device, safe, etc wasn’t defeated and discarded?

This law is as stupid as the lawmakers who wrote it.

And if you say:
Well get one of those 1,000+ lb safes and bolt it down.

My retort:
A. The law doesn’t specify what kind of safe.
B. That’s not an option for a lot of people.
C. Who’s paying for it?

I have to wonder now.
Do all gun owning San Franciscans have a cop peeking into their bedroom window??
How else can they enforce this lock it up law unless a cop is in there with you??
Or peeking in 24/7……….